WRUP: A lesson is learned but I can’t figure out what it is edition

I… huh. Well, all right, let’s start at the beginning. Yes, our line of medication is completely ruined. It was always meant to be a learning experience, and so I’m certain there are important lessons to be learned here. I am, however, entirely unclear on what any of those lessons are supposed toÂ be.

The obvious ones are out. I mean, people don’t like bone pain? We knew that when we were making this drug, but we left it in for some reason. Marketing it to people by just sending it in the mail? Obviously not going to work! We knew that at the time. But our advertising blitz was solid, except I’m still not clear on why we had an advertising blitz. I don’t know exactly what we wanted to accomplish.

Did we want to accomplish something? Maybe the lesson here is “write down what you’re trying to do so you can ascertain what lesson you’re learning.” Muse on that down in this week’s installment of What Are You Playing, I have to stare at one of our pill bottles and wonder what went wrong. Or what things going right would have looked like, too.

â€‹Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): â€‹My Pokemon Go raid group’s getting bigger, but my friend who plays isn’t exactly local, so I’ll be trying to help her at a popular seaside area this weekend while we try to get her an Articuno before it’s gone. Splatoon 2 will probably have to happen too because Salmon Run is so much better than what I played at E3! I also hear Miitopia is finally coming out in the US so…

Justin Olivetti (@Sypster, blog): With Lord of the Rings Online: Mordor quite possibly coming out on Monday, I’ll be turning my fierce attention to getting my Lore-master ready (which means catching up on virtues and a few various quests). I’m also moving on from Egypt to Transylvania in Secret World Legends, so I feel like I’m making good progress there.

MJ Guthrie (@MJ_Guthrie, blog): This weekend will see me playing lots of Secret World Legends as well as spending time on my Scorched Earth server for ARK: Survival Evolved. Also I have more Tinkerfest PQs to complete in order to get all the parts for my future spider familiar. Add in some Conan Exiles building and some Citadel: Forged with Fire fire-bombing, and that pretty much filled the whole weekend.Â Oh wait, wasn’t I going to try and fit some LOTRO in as well? Let me see if I can wish another weekend day into existence…

Will probably play Wizard 101 with the grand son on Sunday. Only have 5 pedestals left in my TSW museum to upgrade to have museum at full superior level, other than that I am just waiting patiently for a game to come out that I can play.

Hah. That’s what I was thinking too, they tease us with this interesting looking picture and a bit of a story to go along with it, and then it doesn’t say what it’s from! I’m staring at the picture with interest and re-reading all the article text again in case I missed it. So I hoped someone would have mentioned it down here in the comments. Luckily the other / first person who replied to you did :D

I’ve been trying out Doomfist in Overwatch whenever I can. I’m slowly catching on to his intricacies. Oddly enough, he seems to work better when you play him more like a Reaper: coming at people from the sides and up top.

I also figured out which Minecraft modpack I wanted to play, The Simple Life 2, and dove into that.

Well, I finally finished downloading Secret World Legends ahead of the Steam crowd, I’m rarin’ to go with TESO and LotRO … and somehow I blew out my morning playing Menzoberranzan, a 25 year old single player RPG. Had a blast. Go Figure. I’ll probably jump in the MMOs tomorrow … right after I get my party through the Cavern of the Driders … Have a great weekend all!

This week: Pigs (Another Sort)…and where I learn about my own contribution to community toxicity that was discussed on Mr. Eliot’s Soapbox this week. As I’ve noted that a couple of my comments have been edited/moderated of late with a the dreaded “(comment deleted)” in orange, linking me to the Code of Conduct page. It’s pretty obvious I’ve stepped over a line in my discourse. And again I ask: Is this the life we really want?

You know, to help defeat toxicity in games and out, I can’t be participating in it. So I definitely have some work cut out to get on top of that. To engage, as opposed to belittle. Take apart the argument, without taking apart the person I disagree with. I ‘ve seen this done so many times effectively and eloquently without the poster dragging it to the gutter. I can least learn to do this.

It’s hard not to be influenced by the stuff we’re so often surrounded by. When we seek out toxic people to reply to, some of that toxin inevitably seeps into us even without us knowing it. It’s stored somewhere in our subconscious and after enough of a build up it can be let loose.

I don’t swear in real life almost ever. I think that swears used all the time are both ignorant and cause the whole point (an extreme punctuation of utmost importance) to be lost. So I start to play a game where my character in the game is constantly saying a certain odd swear all the time (s-word balls). In my daily life all of a sudden I found myself saying it to my own surprise after ingesting it in to my own brain so much. It’s a somewhat different situation but sort of along the same lines, as to what is happening.

Watching how others treat each other it’s hard not to soak some of it up. Soak up enough of it and it will seep back out without us really noticing. Immerse in it too often and we start to feel it’s normal.

We all lose ourselves sometimes but the ability to see that and take a step back, identify what is happening and why and try to think of ways to correct the behavior is a great thing. Some people just get lost in the entirety of it all and don’t even notice their slow slip into depravity.

The higher percentage of people (myself included) normally only post here and move on, never even to ever know if they’re being moderated or not. This makes it all the more difficult to notice if and when we’re becoming infected with the filth around us. So good for you for going back and noticing something was amiss.

Yet, there have been studies that show that those who swear often are not ignorant and more intelligent. Not only that, more honest and passionate. Just thought I’d throw that out there. Profanity doesn’t equal toxicity automatically.

A lot of this weekend is being spent playing Magic with friends. I’m hoping my new deck is as infuriating as I think it is.
Beyond that, it’s more FF12 TZA. After grinding out everyone’s Gambit slots, I’m off to unlock everyone’s Quickenings and making sure I do so on the optimal squares on everyone’s license boards.
I’ve been dabbling in Black Desert again here and there, but when it comes to online games I’ve mostly been playing Splatoon 2 and Duelyst.

Inspired after seeing Dunkirk at an Omni IMAX cinema (transcendent experience), I’ve been at War Thunder a bit.

I had a go at Smite Tactics…I keep trying to find a card battle game that might suit me, but I think the genre is just “not my bag, baby”.

Was tidying up my desktop, and saw Twin Saga still in the corner. I’d installed it months ago, but never launched it. Well, as an anime dilettante, I reckoned I best have a look. It’s actually quite fun, in a pseudo-action combat way, and adorable, and casual…and the whoever wrote the English translations has real talent. The dialogue is clever and often hilarious. The cash shop, however, is an atrocious abomination.

Finally, Golf Star is an Android game I play on the 55″ display through my Nvidia Shield console and controller. It is hugely populated worldwide (53 countries), and a great way to wind down the evening with a couple of cocktails.

Holy crap do I love Stellaris! I spent all week learning and experimenting and modding, now for the weekend I’m feeling confident enough to take off the space training wheels and play a real campaign from beginning to (probably horrible) end.

Yeah, my amusing anecdote was my first “battle,” when my 26 power scout encountered a 10 K power pirate battleship. I managed to pause and save fast enough so I could reload and screencap both sides of that epic conflict. : )

Fortnite and Citadel. Fortnite fills my “just keep shooting zombies” itch while Citadel is taking care of the fantasy world one. Citadel is fun, although does have its issues. Having a giant spawn on a hill where your fortress is after reset kind of sucks.

I have been piddlin’ around with an EA game that is actually not
a survival, sandbox, small server thingie calling itself an MMO. I know, I know, I am old and not with the times.

Longsword – turn-based tabletop tactics…ya that is the sort of thing an old guy plays. As with anything EA, I would not suggest anyone to go buy it blindy (esp this early on), but in another old timie type of twist it has a free demo.

Also a lot of GW2 WvW when I feel like squashing young’uns to bits.

In my continuation of watching the Game of Thrones TV show I am starting to wonder it Funcom had something to do with the production. So many flopping body appendages.

A weekend full of FFXIV for me. Now that all my crafting and gathering jobs are leveled, gil-making efforts are in full swing. So, I’ll be spending a portion of today on that. Then, I have a week’s worth of maps to dig up with the FC this evening and raid the Canals of Uznair. Also, RP tomorrow.

And then hopefully, a little bit of Fortnite mixed in where ever I can fit it.

Ugh, I’ve been in the very slow process of trying to level up all Land/Hand classes together. The only real solace is seeing all the stuff I gather up steadily whittling out of my inventory so I can then go out and clog it up again and repeat the cycle.

Working further into Fortnite, getting my weekly stuff taken care of in Final Fantasy XIV (if I can be pulled off Fortnite long enough), and probably giving Lawbreakers a look. Possibly some other things if I feel like it, but who knows.

Well one’s pretty much in the center of the US and is known as the corn state, while the other is off in the northwestern corner of the US (touching the Canadian border) and is known to be heavy on potatoes and has mountains.

70 hours in FFXII and its a firm reminder why FFXIII was so bad. We had this then like 7 years of nothing followed by a straight line experience to facilitate one strange, strange mans obsession with his own tulpa waifu. What a crushing step down in freedom and player choice. Great game bar a wierd bug where now and then it acts like the dualshocks analogue stick is sticking. Thought my controller was dying but a quick google revealed its an inpatched minor issue in the game making many think their controllers were on the way out. Other than that a fantastic go between of FFXI and FFXIV.
Tried a few games in the PSN sale. Fornite is monster Madness with Fallout 4’s crafting and waaaaay too much crap that i imagine being reduced to a more moba style set ‘hero roster’ on release, Vermintide runs like shit and is the most crash heavy PS4 game since Wasteland 2, Hitman 2016 remains the best stealth game this gen and dying lights complete edition is a good old time for what you want, smashing zambambos and murderhobos.

At this point i’m really in the ‘get what i missed last year on sale’ phase since Stormblood and Splatoon 2 were the last games in a frontloaded as hell year where Mario Oddyssey is really the only game left for 2017 i plan on getting that actually releases this year. its gonna be a slow Autumn for videogames.

Starting off with more Elite Dangerous. My passenger transportation business doesn’t seem to be working out. My passengers keep making stupid requests while I’m flying them to their destination. No, silly passenger, I’m not going to reroute to another system 90LY away to buy you 2 tons of landmines. No, I don’t care that you’re an important CEO of some company I’ve never heard of. Hire some other Commander to do that. You just don’t need landmines while you’re going on vacation.

Then again you thought your dream vacation was going to a prison camp that also happens to be 380,000LS away from the jump in point. I hate you enough already for that already, I’m not rerouting anywhere for you. I’m taking you there whether or not you like it. So sit down, shut up, and forget the landmines. Damn rich people and their weird tastes.

Anyway, I’m thinking about returning to Colonia. Life out there was much simpler. Also more places for me to hide when I accidentally murder people. Plus the sky out there is absolutely breathtaking. My god, it’s filled with stars. This time though I’ll take my Asp or maybe truck my Beluga out there. Take my time and enjoy the journey more this time around. Kind of rushed it and then got bored the first time.

After that I’ll jump back in to some STO. Playing Elite made me remember how much I love Star Trek and how much I miss it. Now if only someone would make a game like Elite but set in the Star Trek universe. STO is nice to take the edge off the Trek itch, but I find that it doesn’t satisfy anymore after playing a huge game like Elite. It’s not even close to enough anymore. Sigh.

I’ll wrap that up with Witcher 3. Finally worked up to playing it again and was able to push past the Skellige arc yesterday. Game is so damn massive that I keep getting distracted and then burned out on all the side missions. Finally had to say no to any more of them and focus on the main line. I can’t believe I’m saying this but…I think there might be too much content in this game. I’m not even half way through this thing and haven’t even touched the expansions yet and I’ve burned out twice already. Whew.

Heh. I do try to make the descriptions of my adventures a little bit more colorful than they really are. The basic missions though actually happen in game.

Take the passenger mission I used here. Passenger missions amount to picking up someone from a starbase and taking them to where ever they want to go. Very straight forward. Some of them are transporting people for business trips or taking a rich tourist to some far flung part of the galaxy. In this case I was taking a CEO who according to the flavor text wanted to go on their dream vacation. In reality it was just flying them from point A to point B. All the elements of the missions are randomized so in this case the random location was a prison colony for the rich CEO’s dream vacation.

Sometimes on transport missions the game can have your passenger ask you to buy stuff for them on the way to their destination. The item requested is randomly chosen as well and usually needs you to fly out of your way to find it. On this mission the random item was 2 tons of landmines. You can choose to get it for them which makes them happy, or tell them no which decreases passenger happiness. If they become too unhappy on the trip then the mission fails. All fairly straight forward stuff.

So on this one the randomized items all lines up to have a rich and demanding CEO from some company wanting to take his dream vacation to a prison colony who also wanted 2 tons of landmines to make his journey more comfortable. It’s a bizarre combination so I just play it up a bit and add in some complaining and it comes out as an amusing story.

Heh I must get all the nice passengers or something when I play Elite: Dangerous. Well its either that or my reputation for crashing my ships into space stations is well know so they don’t want to distract me by making any further requests :-)

Just started Horizon Zero Dawn on my PS4 — I am very, very impressed thus far! So refeshing to see “post apocalyptic” done in a completely different way, which doesn’t focus on blood death, ruin, or nihilism! :-)

Okay, so everybody stay with the group during this field trip we’re on called Life. I’ll be doing a head-count near the end, and I want to see all of your faces!

Nice to see you got back into Fallout 4. Far Harbour is the high point as far as the dlc content goes imo, the others do have some good bits too but I enjoyed the whole Far Harbour spooky island vibe the most.

Horizon Zero Dawn is a whole other different sort of apocalypse. I don’t have a PS4 but I have watched someone steam the entire thing. It does look like a game I could see myself putting a lot of hours into if I played it so hope you have fun.

I seem to be all about BioWare these days: I’m toying around with a female, renegade Shepard in Mass Effect 2; and I’ve also started up Dragon Age: Inquisition.

I finished off my first ever playthrough of the classic Mass Effect trilogy last weekend, and I have to say that it pissed me off, but not for the reasons that it pissed off the entire Internet when it came out. I was choked at how incredibly stupid the second half of Mass Effect 3 was -not that I have a particularly high opinion of BioWare storytelling to begin with- which culminated in the insultingly moronic explanation of the Reapers’ motives. Uggg… Seriously, was the entire writing staff high; or was it a dare to see how far they could coast on the studio’s overblown reputation? Either way, it was one of the stupidest things I’ve ever witnessed in a video game; and let’s face it, there’s a ton of unbelievably stupid shit writing done in video games. Even after wadding through a year of all-powerful dumbass Arcann insulting my intelligence in SWTOR, this was a brand new low for BioWare writing. However, the actual game play is still pretty fun, so here I am doing it again with a “road not taken” playthrough.

But I’ve got an Origin Access sub, so I decided to give Dragon Age: Inquisition a shot because it’s free for me. Don’t ask me about story: first, I literally don’t know what is going on because you get dumped right into the story with no explanation as to the setting, or what is happening (the first is sloppy writing, the second intentional); and second… I highly dislike Tolkien-esque fantasy settings, so as far as I’m concerned it’s all kind of dumb. But the game is a cool hybrid of a MMORPG and squad-based RTS, so that’s something new that I’m finding interesting.

And on the multiplayer front… not much. However, the multiplayer mod for Just Cause 3 just launched this week, so I feel like I may need to reinstall JC3 in order to partake in all that gloriously mindless destruction with a dozens of other people all at once.

bioware’s writing probably turns me off to their games even more than the questionable gameplay design. and because i find their writing so bad ofc it’s frustrating to me that all my friends praise it so loudly. lol still i’m happy for them that they enjoy the games even if i think it’s incredibly bad. you can’t hate your friends for finding joy in things you do not imo.

Secret World Legends – Lv 50, going through City of the Sun God, starting to set myself up for endgame content. Got multiple friends into trying the game, obviously in Kingsmouth.

Heroes of The Storm – A few games.

Dungeons and Dragons – My years long group is finally approaching ‘endgame’ :P. Our floating castle base is being attacked!

Mass Effect: Andromeda is still kind of happening, but there’s such a mix of positive news and negative reports that it just has me nervous about the future of both SP DLC and even MP updates mattering into Fall. Not pessimistic, just nervous.

I know what you mean about the MEA news: it’s all a bunch of rumors that can be easily confirmed or squashed but EA seems intent on remaining silent. I think that they’re waiting to see how the free demo shakes out for them over the next couple months before making definitive announcements. And the demo does make me feel like they’re trying to get some more people into the game before hopefully announcing some DLC. We’ll see.

seems all predicated on staff being moved out of bioware montreal back to their pre MEA HR levels which montreal has always been bioware’s DLC studio at those levels to begin with, so not really anything to worry about as they are likely working at MEA dlc already and quite capable of doing so within the parameters of what they’ve done before in that context at these staff levels.

I have a somewhat high confidence that there will be one DLC, if only because production almost had to have happened for it this summer, or not at all. But beyond that? Two DLCs tend to indicate a longer term plan, and three tend to indicate confidence (which for example didn’t end up happening for DA2; I’m not counting as three because Exiled Prince was ‘Day 1’). Maybe they lack confidence. And with all this uncertainty, maybe there is still no DLC at all – I’m just not inclined to believe that Kotaku stuff.

It’s been a while since I’ve commented on one of these articles! Glad to see I can edit my display name now.

I started playing Rift again this week so that’s what I intend to play over the weekend. I have 3 characters in the 40s but I have never made it to Storm Legion content so this time I intend to finish the last few levels I need to see the content from the first expansion. I’m kind of kicking myself a little for not buying PoA when it included a character boost but the TTK complaints kept me away from the game when it launched.

Rift is a game I had a good couple of years with but I kind of just drifted away from it. I keep meaning to go back and see if I can find some fun in the latest expansions. I just always seem to have other games vying for my attention so it keeps getting pushed down the list. One day ….. maybe :-)

I am really just spinning my wheels a bit till next weeks Path of Exile expansion releases so I have been dipping in and out of a few games. Done a bit of casual Diablo 3 and Grim Dawn to start loosening up my arpg muscles in preparation :-)

Still doing my Secret World Legends dailies but not much else. Will take a look at the Whispering Tide event when that gets going in a few days as I missed it the first time round.

Still unlocking the various planet nodes in Warframe. Also crafting weapons that I don’t have the space to actually equip without deleting others that I haven’t finished with yet. Yeah mistakes were made /blush (Also I am now super excited for the Warframe expansion after seeing the dev stream yesterday it looks amazing.)

Apart from those a bit of Overwatch, tried Doomfist don’t like him and went back to my usual heroes. A bit of the Elder Scrolls Legends trading card thingy, the pve quest is fun enough but I don’t have the cards to be competitive in versus mode and probably never will.

I think that should keep me busy for the weekend. Hope you all have a safe and fun gaming weekend o/

been super casual derping about in albion this week, which i feel is really the best way to approach the classic camp grind style of the game. i kind of go out to farm a specific thing for a half hour at a time not including travel time and stick to that and generally it works out well. tho alot of the farm spots are super crowded when i get to them.

me and sundial did a nother group farm which we picked up a random PUG this time around which really upped the ante on TTK of the group tuned mobs. and then we nightcapped with a couple duels as part of our mission parameters when doing the group farm is to hit up the random spawn pvp portals in blue zones to do some 2v2 action.

which video share this week is us dueling. first time for me doing pvp in the game at all and you can see the mistakes i made but it’s a learning experience ofc and we both learned alot i think

Canceled FF14 after initial 30 days, wasnt fun enough to pay a sub. Will pop into Gloria Victis a little to check out the new stuff, but not much to do there yet. Dont see much else worth playing yet, so I guess Ill go outside again.

I’m still trying to get better ion HotS – its the only multiplayer game I’ve been playing recently. I want to pick up a single player I already own – I think either Stellaris or Alan Wake.

Doing TM (just finished a session) and going outside now for some summer yard clean up work. Edging, some transplants and amending some clay soil that just doesn’t want to normalize. I’ve got to give it the push it needs to make my Bermuda grass shine!

I hear rumblings about some announcements at Gamescom in august. Hope it is true, a warcraft event would be fun (I say this as a SC fan first and foremost, but that is the cool thing about HotS blending all the franchises together).

i mostly play SC heroes myself in the game, but usuall nexus events bring us into the game to get in the one game a day thing which usually means at least a few games as we pull people together to get it t done for everyone lol

which any future nexus events if anyone on massively needs a group that is chill and competent hit me up and we’ll get you in and dailies done.